Music Can Prevent Age-Related Cognitive Decline

According to researchers at the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University, Illinois, there is exciting new research that shows how being a lifelong practicing musician can make the brain healthier. Nina Kraus, an auditory neuroscientist at the Northwestern University School of Communication, is the Principal Investigator for the evidence outlined below.

The more you play, the more you profit across the lifespan! There is a correlation showing that as the total number of years practiced increases, the musicians showed increased scores in the following areas: attention, working memory, hearing speech in noise, and neural speech-sound processing. Strait & Kraus (2013) Hearing Research

Music training affects sound processing across the lifespan. (this study measures how reliably is the brain processing the sound) Skoe and Kraus (2013) Frontiers

A lifetime of playing an instrument protects musicians from age-related neural declines. In this study, musicians had a faster neural response than non-musicians. Anderson et al. (2012) Journal of Neuroscience